If you own a RTR electric car, buggy or truck chances are that you already made yourself familiar with the so called Tamiya-style connectors. The white, bulky plugs are some sort of industry standard for a very, very, very long time now. They became familiar thanks to japanese company Tamiya that equip(ped) their mechanical speed controls, batteries and nowadays their electronic speed controllers with these connectors. From a buyers point of view it is very nice to have ready configured connectors right out of the box especially since nearly every battery manufacture in the past used Tamiya plugs for their 'Sports' or 'Entry Level' battery packs.
But things have changed. With batteries becoming more and more powerful over the last couple of years, with brushless motors and all of the other 'go fast' goodies the Tamiya plugs now are a bit out-dated. Why is that? Because, due to their design, they only can handle a certain amount of power. The small contact surface of the tiny contacts make for a massive amount of electrical resistance that lead to very hot or even melted connectors when used with powerful motors and batteries. Even high ambient temperatures can make the two parts of the connector stick together for ever.
To overcome this problem and also to allow for even more acceleration, top speed and running time it is highly recommended to make use of one of the many high performance connectors out there. Oh, wait! Haven't we mentioned that before? The electrical resistance we just mentioned not only makes your connectors hot but also your ride slow as the electrical energy that's wasted in heat otherwise would additionally power your ride. Ok, back to the connectors. We highly recommend the use of good quality ones from Deans, Traxxas or the 'Corally'-type 4 millimeter Gold Plugs. Deans and Traxxas connectors have the advantage of being reverse polarity protected which means you do not have to fear blown up batteries or speed controllers. Nuff' said – read on!
Above is what you need to do the trick. The controller with that nasty Tamiya plug, new and shiny Deans-style connectors, some shrink wrap, a sharp hobby knive, soldering iron and solder as well as a lighter or any other heat source to shrink the shrink wrap. Oh, and you of course need a side-cutter to cut off the old connector.
Cut off the old connector with the side-cutter. You can now also adjust the lenght of the wires in case they are much to long. If you are unsure of what the correct length is leave it as it is as otherwise you might end up with a too short wire.
We replace the connector in a speed controller in this feature. If you wish or need to replace the connectors also on your battery packs please make sure to cut one wire at a time! Othewise you very likely short-circuit the battery pack. We also recommend to cut and resolder black (negative) wire before the red (positive) wire as the latter is the hot wire.
Now carefully cut away 4 to 5 mm of the silicone isolation in preperation to pre-solder the exposed ends of the copper wire. Make sure to only cut the isolation silicone and not the fine copper wires underneath.
Apply good quality radio solder with a hot soldering iron. No part of the wire should be left without solder so make sure to take a look underneath the soldering joint.
When both wires are soldered slide some shrink wrap over both wires and slide it all the way down towards the speed controller to prevent the shrink wrap from shrinking due to the heat of the soldering iron.
Now also pre-solder the connectors. Be aware that these Deans style connectors allready have a poarity sign on them. Solder the black (negative) wire to the '-' port and the red (positive) wire to the '+' port. Simple, eh?
In the above picture we already soldered the red wire and protected the soldering joint with shrink wrap. For best results and to make life easier we highly recommend the use of a so called 'third hand' that holds the wire and connector firmly during soldering. This helps to prevent 'cold' soldering joints with insufficient connection between the wire and the solder tab.
The second wire is in place, now it's time to protect that soldering joint too.
You can further protect the connector and the wires by using an additional layer of shrink wrap. This prevents dust and dirt from entering the space between the two wires. Use around 15 mm of larger shrink wrap, slide it over the connector, shrink it with a lighter or heat gun and off you go.
Voilà! There you have a wonderful (and POWERful) connector. Just in case you still don't know: The powerful one is the black one on the left side ...
